support from the newly elected Kennedy administration in 1961 led to the original proposals to gut the building being dropped. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy was instrumental in persuading architect John Carl Warnecke, a friend of her husband, to create a design that would incorporate the new buildings with the old, based on the architectural theory of contextualism. The Cutts-Madison House, Cosmos Club building, and Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House were joined, and a courtyard built between them and the National Courts building. The building has remained part of the National Courts Building complex ever since, and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Construction Benjamin Ogle Tayloe married Julia Maria Dickinson on November 8, 1824. Although Tayloe preferred to live at Windsor, his estate in King George County, Virginia, his wife asked that they move into the city, where she was more comfortable. The house was constructed on Lots 10 and 11 in Square 221. At the time of the building's construction in 1828, the expanse of the city from 15th Street NW (one block east of the home) to 17th Street NW from the White House north to H Street NW was a flat field bare of trees and shrubs. As originally built, the Federal-style house had three stories. The completed house had four or five parlors. It was built of unpainted, cream-colored brick. The entrance was level with the ground, with an oriel window above it on the second floor and a Palladian window on the third floor above that. An oval portico protected visitors arriving at the front doors. Tayloe years The house was completed in 1828, but not immediately occupied. Tayloe had a strong political disagreement with the newly elected President, Andrew Jackson, and refused to move into the home. Tayloe leased the building to Thomas Swann, Sr., a lawyer (and the father of Thomas Swann, Jr., who became Governor of Maryland in 1866). Swann vacated the home in November 1829, at which time Tayloe and his wife occupied it. The house was an important social gathering place for important Washingtonians in the four decades following its construction. In 1829, when Henry Clay left the office of Secretary of State, much of the furniture in his home was acquired by the Tayloes and used to decorate their home. Tayloe House was the last house in Washington visited by President William Henry Harrison before his